


Longing

by Haldane



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haldane/pseuds/Haldane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting with Mary Morstan provides Watson with a new insight about his relationship with Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing

Watson enters the room. I have already determined by the sound of his tread on the stairs (slightly slow, and a little heavier than usual) that he is in a decidedly depressed mood. He looks around, ostentatiously appearing casual, and clearly waiting to be asked a specific question.

I feel indulgent today, so I ask it. "What are you looking for?"

"I was wondering if Miss Alder - or perhaps Mrs. Godfrey Norton, depending - was still in residence."

There is something odd about his voice. A _flatness_ perhaps. I require a larger sample.

"She is not, was not, and never will be in residence. What should you think otherwise?"

"Never will be? So you harbour no, romantic, sentiments towards such an exceptional woman?"

Ah, perhaps my Watson is jealous. His Mary, while intelligent and bold beyond most of her class, is hardly a candle against Irene's blaze. Emboldened, and high from the cocaine I injected half an hour ago, I elaborate on the topic.

"I do not feel about her in that way. I believe my sentiments are more like those I have observed between siblings in very close families. I rejoice at her successes - as long as they do not come at my expense - and am downcast at her failures. I would walk through fire to help her, should she ever be in the unlikely position of needing my help. I feel more awake when she arrives in my life and am always hollow for a while after she leaves. She is the closest I have ever found to a person like myself."

"A like soul, perhaps?"

"Yes. An excellent term for it. Now why are you asking?"

"I was exploring in order to decide if you had any use for this." And to compliment his words, Watson places a gold ring with a very familiar large diamond in the setting onto the table between us.

The message is obvious enough, but Watson can be confusing at times. "The last time I saw that, it was adorning Miss Morstan's hand. She has returned it to you?"

"Indeed. As you yourself have remarked, the lady is perceptive. What she has perceived this last week has caused her to change her mind. While she is perfectly willing to be placed behind my work as a doctor, she will not accept second place behind other people in my life." Watson glances at me as if expecting an interjection, but I let him speak. "A dog cannot serve two masters. She has seen that when you and she both call, your needs come first with me. I cannot dispute that observation."

"I would hardly call you a dog," I reply, picking up the ring and twirling it through my fingers. Tiny prisms of light flicker across the walls of the room. 

"Do you wish to know the strangest part?" The question is obviously rhetorical. "Until this moment, I did not truly understand her discontent." Watson takes the ring from me and places it in a slice of shadow, so it is no more than a bit of dull glass. Then he turns it into the sun and the rainbows reappear. "However, seeing things from a different angle can provide illumination."

"Are you planning to start making sense again anytime soon?" I am not really annoyed, but I will be bored soon if he wanders away from the point he seems to be trying to make. I poke the ring just to make the rainbows dance.

"I came back to Baker Street, under the assumption that I could simply reverse the step of becoming engaged and return to my life as it was." He laughs, but with no humour in it. "It seems that I, too, want to rank first with someone I care about. Your passionate description of Miss Adler has disabused me of the false conceit that I might occupy that position. I can only apologise; it must have been mere proximity that misled me."

"So... are you or are you not moving back in? You have hardly finished moving out," I point out to him. His motives are remarkably unclear to me, and thus I cannot predict his actions.

"I am moving out. I would no longer be content with what I had here before, knowing that at any moment Miss Adler might reappear, in which case I would abruptly vanish from your concerns. And Miss Morstan no longer sees me as a suitable husband, oddly enough for exactly the same reasons."

"Where will you go?" I feel strangely adrift, although sheltered by the drug's euphoria from actually being upset by this reversal in my life. My mental processes had told me that the marriage would not occur or be of short duration, either case restoring the status quo at Baker Street. This outcome I had not foreseen.

"Ha!" Short, and bitter. No confusion now in reading my Watson. "I have found a way to defeat all your calculations. You cannot read me to predict where I am going, because I do not know myself." He lifts one hand in a derogatory salute, and turns on his heel. 

I move to rise up out of my chair, which turns into a struggle with cushions and blanket, and when I step towards him he has already left the room. To my utter surprise, I hear the main door below open and close, and my Watson has gone.


End file.
